Friday, 30 May 2008

And I picked up wind of a conference on Long Poems at Sussex University via Carrie Etter's blog. Wish I'd heard about it before it happened... If anyone reading this was there, would be great to hear how it went. Any further recommendations of long poems much appreciated.

Narrative is made from melted moments,broken glass from forgotten windows.If you join today, confusion and striationwill be the mind's snowstorm. More cursingand you will render time null and void,without story or semblance of a future;it will be difficult to set off down the road.

If you associate misconduct with discovery,we will include a ready reckoner withthe chance to leap from a high placeof our choice. Your life may depend on it,so tell us if you have a nomadic tendencyor ever go out looking for intensity.Don't forget to let the reader imagine

and forget about total system failure.Just stay in touch and try to rememberhow great the boom in nostalgia was.The last time grace erupted, it wasonly a draft version, so make sureyou always have a drink in handand send us all your money now.

Tuesday, 20 May 2008

which I, Simon Turner, hereby commit: you can read a review by me of Peter Stanford's new biography of Cecil Day-Lewis at EYEWEAR. The rather dashing photo is of a young Day-Lewis, I should add, and not of me.

Thursday, 15 May 2008

Out from the stationarmed by glass and reflectionat the same pace as political eruptions(but not to scale)over power lines of languageone two, they cometogether, open legs through light and naked trees.Open, close, open again.

I notice houses in much the same waythat an army might, translate againE-W-S into the compass, not 1707

plotted along lines like these, signed inblack loops like droppedcables, expostulatedagainst daily, to these approaching, opening skies.

II

Policemen pregnantwith danger –several walkie-talkies, onefor each language, cuffs, othermeasures that can be made rectangular.Maybe even books.

III

Walk into this world of choice,where you can have a ‘gait assessment’ for ten pounds,so that you do not incline any more,either to the right, orto the left – you can buy this for politics –and you do not overpronate, or underpronate(meaning lean into yourselftoo far, or bend too far out).Only so manymiddle grounds you can occupyknowingly.

IV

Distinctly not a photograph, then. Notthe rosehips fallingin ways, or the configurationof fallen fence planks; notthe platinum face of earlymorning through the late gaps,grinning its way into memory, andanother layer,the circling shutter,

but working up slow by slowly, to imperfection,like words and hardworked sentencesdo. Not simulacra. Not ‘as it was’.

Not youin the gap,a blank among planks, a plantin platinum, waiting to be decayed like gardens.Not this.

V

The tartan at cross-purpose but good purpose to the pavingis the moon tracking the scaffolding – no, its tracking of the moon,and a ruler to measure steps home;unintended consequence of building,like the way words fall out

as new tactics for old wars,the bitter ones we chew atand fight with ourselves, wanking and spurninganything else, wrestling the old known enemyto be occasionallysurprised by a left hook when you were expecting a right,the right takenaway, and loving thatsurprise, wanting, no, needing, no, it.

Interlude (II)

(We) forgot to give each otherpronouns. It was like that then;[‘yesterday’, too, is a weapon; detentionof the ‘moment’, which, too, is a weapon. Youare hit so often].

(We) spoke in tongues, disentangledtautology to lie, equal and opposite, in parallel lines,passing each current through (our) arms,modelled on each otheryet distinct. Two models. And pretended(we) weren’t thinking about other things.Tomorrow, lying sharpened on the floor.Politics. Particles. Which (we)were, of course. Doing.Those, and phrasal verbs. Doing those.Saying things.

Transatlantic fibre-optic cableswere subsumed by compounds, runninglike the many little suppositions(we) had about each other;

Change makes (us)give up conceits. What appears to be sandat low tide is the lamp-spillfrom the embankment’s edge, predictingnew densities, saying not markingwhere sand, too, will fall, and rise.And this, you know, has nothing to do with our,we buried cables. Nor, dear, with us.

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Gloria Dawson is 23 and lives in Oxford. She won the Ledbury Poetry Prize 2001, Foyle Young Poet of the Year 2004, and was shortlisted for a Gregory Award in 2005. Upcoming appearances include supporting Jackie Kay at the Soho Theatre in June. Having suffered a degree in English literature, she is trying to escape the box, discovering instead that the box has a lot of corners and a lot of common ground.

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A Japanese poetry student of Ezra Pound's, on being asked what makes a poem, responded "It should contain gists and piths."Gists and Piths is a blog dedicated to the discussion and publication of contemporary poetry, fiction, film, visual art, and everything in between. Here you'll find book reviews, interviews, enraged post-modernist manifestoes, long-form essays and much more.